


After Our War

by trill_gutterbug



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Mid-Canon, Post-Canon, The Author Regrets Everything, but i mostly blame nate for that, in which lingua and i single-handedly populate the nate/mike tag with thirsty curtain fic, nerds that's who, pretentious use of poetry, this is an embarrassing window into my id, who on earth majors in classics anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:54:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trill_gutterbug/pseuds/trill_gutterbug
Summary: Mike asks Nate, once, what he intends to do when he’s out of the Corps. He asks this about five minutes after Nate tells him, pale with exhaustion and staring unseeing through the humvee’s windshield into the dark, that he doesn’t plan to re-up.
Relationships: Nate Fick/Mike Wynn
Comments: 16
Kudos: 72





	After Our War

**Author's Note:**

> As always, for [lingua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua/works) because she's an evil enabler.

Mike asks Nate, once, what he intends to do when he’s out of the Corps. He asks this about five minutes after Nate tells him, pale with exhaustion and staring unseeing through the humvee’s windshield into the dark, that he doesn’t plan to re-up.

Mike says, “Huh,” because while he’d seen it coming, it still hits him in the gut. He realizes he’d been entertaining vague ideas of being attached to Nate’s nine for the rest of time. “Yeah,” he says, before his silence can make Nate turn to look at him. “That makes sense.”

It doesn’t work; Nate turns to look at him anyway. It’s dark, Mike’s NVGs tipped up because they’re rationing battery power for driving and main watch, but he can still make out the shape of Nate’s face, the hollow spots where his eyes are hidden in the shadow of his kevlar. The victor is empty but for them, Stafford and Christeson snoring away in side-by-side graves outside, the camp quiet as a platoon of Marines can get. Technically, they’re on twenty-five percent watch. Mike had told Nate a half hour ago to sack out, but Nate had shaken his head, the bags under his eyes dark as pencil smudges, and climbed into the passenger seat without a word. They’re parked in the back forty of camp, behind two staggered lines of humvees, their stern up against a berm. Mike pulled in here specifically so they wouldn’t get main nightwatch by the road, so that Nate could sleep.

“Does it?” Nate asks. There’s a strange edge to his voice that Mike identifies, after a second, as bitterness.

“Yeah.” Mike tips one shoulder in a shrug. “You’re too good for this shit, Nate.”

There’s another moment of silence, Nate staring at him, inscrutable in the dark. Finally, Nate snorts and looks back out the windshield. Ahead of them, barely visible as negative spaces against the lighter sand, are Poke and Pappy’s victors. If Mike squints, he can make out the shape of their turrets outlined by the sky.

“Too good for it,” Nate says softly. “Yeah. Like every other officer. Too good to handle fucking reality.”

“That’s not what I meant,” says Mike. He frowns at the soft line of Nate’s profile. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” Nate makes an aborted gesture that ends with his hands falling back into his lap. “I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t know why we’re here, I don’t know what we’re doing, I don’t know - I don’t know why we’re even still alive. This is fucking insanity and I’m just riding the roller coaster.”

Mike eyebrows rise. It’s the closest Nate’s gotten to saying _ Fuck this shit _ out loud, so far as he knows. “See, that’s what I mean,” he says. “You know better than to swallow this bullshit with a smile. People like me, the career idiots, we signed up to do dumb shit, say nothing, take our lumps. You, though…” He pauses, feeling his way toward phrasing that won’t raise Nate’s hackles. “You see through it, Nate. You should be doing something bigger than this.”

Nate’s shoulders slump. After a second, he raises a hand and presses the heel of it between his eyes. He’s had a headache for days, Mike knows, a vicious combination of dehydration, sun glare, stress, and exhaustion that the Tylenol in their kits hasn’t been able to touch. All day, he’s looked on the verge of a crash, drawn and peaked. It’s making Mike itch unbearably to take him somewhere safe, somewhere quiet, and put him soundly to bed, but this is as close as he’s going to get to that crazy fantasy. He reaches across the radio to touch the side of Nate’s neck, curling his knuckles in the collar of the MOPP so he can thumb the curve of Nate’s jaw. It’s smooth as ever, barely touched by the stubble Mike and half the platoon have to scrape off their own faces with increasingly dull razors every morning. He’s just a kid, Mike thinks for the thousandth time, with the usual surge of hopeless pride. A kid doing his best, like the rest of them.

Nate tips his head incrementally toward Mike, breathing out a quiet, trembling exhale. He doesn’t like what he’s described as coddling on Mike’s part, but he does hit a point (with increasing regularity, Mike’s noticed) where he seems to realize he needs a break. However brief, however insufficient, he has to shut his eyes and hit pause, just for a minute.

“You’re doing good,” Mike says. “Nate.” He hooks his fingers under Nate’s chin, turning him. They can’t see each other’s eyes in the darkness, but he knows Nate’s looking straight at him. “You’re doing good.”

For a second, Nate doesn’t move. If there was enough light, Mike thinks he’d see the familiar sharp expression that means Nate is gathering data, filtering it for truth and relevance, building an actionable plan. Mike waits for the inevitable conclusion, the one Nate always comes to - that he can trust Mike and his opinions, his competency, his honesty. That Mike wouldn’t lie to him, no matter how difficult the truth. When he lets his chin sink into Mike’s hand, accepting, Mike’s ready for it. He takes the weight of it, both physical and metaphorical. He wishes he could say more, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he leans over the radio to find Nate’s mouth in the dark and kiss it. Nate opens for him with a tired sigh. His shoulder presses into Mike’s, body sagging. Mike doesn’t linger too long; he knows better than to take chances like that, and he doesn’t want Nate ratcheting right back into jumpy tension over the threat of discovery. He pulls back, wiping his thumb over Nate’s wet bottom lip before letting him go. “Don’t worry,” he says, and lets his grin show in his tone, because they both know Nate is physically incapable of not worrying.

Nate chuckles. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, but it’s a better silence than before; more contemplative, less frayed. Eventually, Mike asks, “So what are you gonna do? Once you’re out.”

Nate makes a considering noise, a sort of verbal shrug. “I haven’t thought about it. I don’t want to, in a way.”

Mike gets it. He understands all too well the superstitious wariness of planning for the future. Making concrete plans is like waving a red flag in front of the universe, he’s found.

“I don’t really have a home,” Nate goes on. “That sounds bad. I mean to say, I don’t have a home of my own. I lived with my parents until college, and then…” He makes a shadowy gesture. “OCS, BRC, deployment…”

“Right,” says Mike.

“All my stuff’s in storage.” Nate shakes his head. “I don’t even have a car.”

Mike snorts. He pats the dash of the humvee. “Don’t listen to him, baby.”

Nate laughs. It sounds surprised, like he didn’t realize he still had the capacity. Mike laughs too.

It’s a good moment. A good night, almost. He convinces Nate to lie down in the back seat for a while, just to rest his eyes, and isn’t surprised to hear snoring ten minutes later. When Mike’s watch is up, he wakes Stafford, threatening him quietly with castration if he disturbs the LT for anything short of life and death.

“Jesus, Gunny, okay,” Stafford mumbles, knuckling his eyes. “Screwby.”

For the rest of the invasion - the parts of it they manage to participate in, anyway - Mike watches Nate turn inward more and more. The hollowing of his eyes, the tightening of his mouth, the slump of his shoulders, it adds up. He does his job, and he does it well, but Mike can see he’s already checked out. He’s done with all of it.

Finally, they get word passed down from Division: their tour is officially finished, they’re being recalled stateside. Relief goes through camp in a wave of giddiness. Frowns turn upside down, there’s backslapping and hollering, performative boasts of _ We were just getting fucking started!_, wrestling and squabbling, a roaring fever pitch of excitement. Even the hard-timers, guys like Rudy and Lovell who Mike knows will be right back in the field as soon as they can manage it, are grinning ear to ear.

Nate doesn’t relax until they’re all on the plane headed for Spain, and even then only enough to sleep with his head against the window for an hour. Mike doesn’t have high hopes that their brief tenure at Naval Station Rota will be any more restful than the chaos they just endured at the hands of Kuwait’s redeployment apparatus. He's too familiar with post-deployment paperwork, debriefs, and hoop-jumping to expect Nate will get more than a couple hours to himself for sleeping every day. He sits next to Nate on the plane and gets a head start on the mile-high stack of forms they’ll be slogging through for the next week. It’s not the mile high club he’d _ like _to be joining, but he can’t wrap his head around the idea of Nate letting himself get jerked off in a tiny bathroom over the Mediterranean Sea with all of Bravo Company just outside the door, regardless of how much he might need it. They’ll both have to be patient.

NAVSTA Rota turns out to be every bit as frustrating as Mike expected, but at least they’re not getting shot at. Nate even gets his own little room with a door that locks, which Mike takes advantage of one evening by showing up with a sheaf of documents in hand for plausible deniability. Nate opens the door half a second after Mike’s knock, bare-headed and looking nearly naked in his t-shirt and base fatigues. Mike eyes him, absorbing the scandalous sight of his forearms and throat, the sharp tan lines at his wrists and collar.

“Sir,” he says.

“Gunny,” Nate replies.

They both know why Mike’s here, Mike can see the awareness of it dawning on Nate’s face. He starts to look cautiously excited just as Mike lifts the papers. “Need your John Hancock.”

“Oh,” Nate says. “Right. Of course.” He moves aside, letting Mike step into the tiny room with its desk and lamp, narrow dresser and narrower bed. There’s no window, which is all the better. Mike looks around, taking in the neat pile of paperwork already towering on Nate’s desk, the watch and wallet laid next to each other on the dresser, the tightly-made bed. He waits to hear the door shut before turning around.

Nate’s looking at him, his back to the door, hands loose at his sides. Mike’s having a hard time getting a read on his expression. It’s… nervous, maybe. Mike doesn’t like that.

“You okay?” he asks.

Nate nods. “Fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

Nate frowns. “It’s been a busy few days.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. He puts the papers on Nate’s desk, straightening their edges when he sees Nate’s eyes flick to them. “Want to talk about it?”

Slowly, Nate’s eyes travel back to his. He works his jaw, visibly considering and discarding a half dozen responses until finally he shakes his head and sighs. “Not really, no.”

Mike nods. “Alright. No talking.” He reaches for Nate’s wrist.

~*~

Once, Nate tried to end it. Well, it was more than once, but Mike’s only counting the times Nate was cogent, unaroused, and making direct eye contact. And there was barely anything _ to _ end. If Mike wanted to get particular, a couple handjobs and a half dozen clandestine kisses in the dark didn’t mean much. If that was the metric for a relationship, he’d gotten married in more bar bathrooms across the U.S. than he’d care to recall. Of course, this situation was different. _ Nate _was different. Mike had never been in the habit of fucking around on the job, much less with his direct superior. Because he had a functioning brain stem, he experienced a healthy measure of concern about what they were getting up to, but Nate’s guilty conscience was a force to be reckoned with.

“It’s an abuse of power,” Nate had said, all big earnest eyes and firm voice. “The fact that I let it happen once is inexcusable enough, but to continue…” He worked his jaw, looking at Mike like he was staring down an execution squad. “You should report me.”

Mike laughed. He didn’t mean to, it just burst out of him. The thought of it, of marching up to Schwetje and saying, _ “Sir, I’d like to file a sexual harassment complaint against Lieutenant Fick. I kissed him behind a goat shed the other day and boy do I feel violated about it now,” _filled him with a grim, slapstick amusement.

“Nate…” Mike said, when Nate did not laugh along with him but instead recoiled like he’d been slapped. “Nobody’s being coerced, here. Trust me. You’re not forcing me into anything.”

“It’s not about _ forcing_,” Nate insisted. “It’s about -”

“I know.” Mike wanted to touch Nate’s shoulder, give him a gentle shake or just a nudge, the sort of wordless _I got your six_ he’d been giving Nate for months now, ever since they were assigned to each other before Kuwait. “I know what you mean. But I’m telling you flat-out that ain’t what this is, and you know it.”

Nate did know. Mike saw it written all over his face. He also saw the clenching jaw and the lowering brows and the flattening mouth; that bull-headed look that meant Nate had the bit between his teeth and wasn’t planning to give ground.

“Mike,” Nate said, in his best _ I will be accepting no more shit today _ tone, and Mike lifted his hands, conceding.

“Okay,” he’d said. “Okay, Nate. Whatever you need.”

And what Nate needed, apparently, was a day and a half of clusterfuck after shitshow after FUBAR disaster, a night of not sleeping, a growing tally of dead civilians, a command structure breathing down his neck with hostile intent, and to drop his roast beef MRE in the sand. Mike watched it happen from the other side of the humvee, like a slow motion car crash. The fumble, the splat, the dawning look of incredulous existential despair on Nate’s face. If it had been anyone else, Mike would have chuckled. As it was, he winced, looked around, and leaned through the humvee window to grab another packet from the open box.

“Here.” He held it out across the hood.

Nate turned around. “No,” he said. “I - That’s okay, I’ll just…” He glanced down at the MRE on the deck. It had bounced, rolled, and mostly spilled. It was more a blob of wet sand than food. His shoulders slumped. “We’re on one meal a day, I can’t take another one.”

“Well, you can’t not eat, either.” Mike wiggled the packet. It was Thai chicken, which Nate didn’t like as much as roast beef, but it wasn’t a bad runner up. “Come on, sir. Don’t make me get official with you.”

Nate held out another few seconds, looking between his ruined meal and the fresh one, then did as he was told. He ate efficiently, silently, nodded his thanks to Mike when he was done, and took off to be busy on the other side of camp for the rest of the day.

That night, Mike woke in his grave on the back side of the humvee to Nate crouching next to him, his booted feet caving in the edge of the hole. Mike was already reaching for his gun, but Nate stopped him with a quick gesture. Mike stared up at him, silhouetted against the stars. “What’s happening?” he whispered.

Silence, then Nate curled forward, folding as low as he could in his MOPP and deuce gear to rest his kevlar against Mike’s. “I’m sorry,” he said, barely loud enough to hear. “I’m sorry, I just -”

“Hey,” Mike said. He got an arm out from between them to slide his hand over the back of Nate’s neck, to squeeze his shoulder through the thickness of the suit and pull him close. It was awkward in their suits, at this angle, but Mike didn’t let go until Nate pulled away on his own. He sat up to be on Nate’s level, even though they could barely see each other.

“I apologize for what I said the other day.” Nate spoke softly enough not to wake Christeson, who was sawing logs five feet away. “At the time, I felt a responsibility to amend my unprofessional behavior, but upon further reflection, I realize my motives were driven by fear and not nobility. And I don’t want to operate on a basis of fear. Not in my professional life and certainly not in my personal one.”

Mike blinked. “Nate...” he began.

Nate took a breath, cutting him off. “I don’t expect… I expect nothing from you but the same exemplary commitment to duty you’ve always shown. My personal feelings are purely incidental, and I mention them only to clear the air between us. Please don’t take them to mean…” He stopped, stammering. “To mean anything you don’t…”

Mike reached for him again. If the boys weren’t sleeping so close, if they weren’t right next to the road, he would have kissed Nate’s smart, stupid mouth. Instead, he let their kevlar knock back together, forehead to forehead, and said, “Sir, with all due respect, don’t be a dumbass.”

Nate made a tiny breathy sound, a pinched, humorless laugh. He gripped the front of Mike’s MOPP, leaning into him. “Unfortunately, dumbassery seems to be my enduring state of being.”

“Nah.” Mike lifted a hand to touch the curve of Nate’s cheek. “You’ll grow out of it.”

~*~

Mike doesn’t sleep in Nate’s bed. It’s too small for that and he’s too aware of the bustling base right outside the door, but he kind of dozes for a few minutes, letting the warm glow of orgasm and clean sheets wash over him. Nate gets up almost immediately, pulling on his shorts and a t-shirt. It’s too bad. This is the first time Mike’s seen him naked and had time to appreciate it. Nate’s skinnier than he was before Kuwait, but then again they all are. He’s still got that compact, capable musculature Mike has always admired on him.

“Hey, listen,” he says, watching Nate turn circles around the tiny room, trying to appear busy. He keeps shooting sideways looks at Mike from under his lashes, swallowing hard. “Where are you going, when we get stateside?”

Nate shrugs. He scratches his throat, where Mike had been careful not to leave a mark but had sure as hell wanted to. “To see my parents, first.”

Mike nods. He’s mostly naked still, although he’d pulled on his shorts half-heartedly when Nate got up. He rubs a hand down his belly, casual, just to watch Nate’s gaze follow it. “After that?”

Nate’s eyes obligingly travel the length of Mike’s bare torso before snapping back up. “Haven’t decided yet,” he tells the wall above Mike’s head. “I was thinking about school again.”

Mike nods. “Neat. You should come stay with me.”

Nate’s eyes meet his for the first time since he stood up. There’s a long pause, like he’s trying to figure out what he just heard. “Pardon me?”

Mike tips one shoulder. It’s a bit manipulative. He knows how Nate feels about his shoulders and he knows what he looks like from this angle. “Come stay with me.”

Nate blinks. “That’s… What do you mean? For how long?”

“However long you want.”

Nate’s mouth opens, then shuts. He looks gobsmacked. Mike watches a flush crawl up his neck into his cheeks. “I…”

It’s almost fun, seeing him rendered speechless. Mike has watched Nate chew and swallow more unspoken words than there are grains of sand in Iraq, bite his tongue and take deep breaths and tactfully volunteer the bare minimum, but he’s never seen him struggle to speak before.

“Nate,” Mike says, because if his first response is amusement, his second is gentleness. He waits until Nate meets his gaze, eyebrows cinched tight with that familiar little stitch of worry. It makes Mike ache to butt shoulders with him, fortify him with silent solidarity. “I want you to come stay with me. If you want to. For as long or as short as you want to.”

Nate stares at him. He’s breathing hard.

Mike holds out his hand. The room is so small that, even standing by the desk, Nate doesn’t need to lean forward to take it, immediately responding to the gesture like they’re magnetized to each other. Mike hooks one finger around Nate’s thumb. “Just think about it,” he says. He gives Nate’s hand a gentle tug. “Okay?”

There’s a moment of silence, Nate looking at their joined hands like they’re a puzzle he can hardly fathom the existence of, much less the solution to. “Okay,” he finally says. “I will.”

~*~

Nate flies home from Oceanside to see his parents. Mike sees him off from base with a handshake, one of eleven other guys who have gathered to say their farewells. He knows Nate is too cautious, too professional, to let their hands linger, but Mike imagines he does anyway. He doesn’t think he imagines the quick stroke of Nate’s thumb over his knuckles, or the tinge of pink on Nate’s cheekbones. It might be lingering sunburn, or it might not.

“Have a safe flight, sir,” says Brad, who does let his hand linger on Nate’s, giving him that up-close, intense stare of his. “Stay frosty.”

If Mike were at all the jealous sort, he might feel something about the way Nate looks back. But he’s not, so he just smiles over Brad’s shoulder and nods his silent farewell when Nate turns to head for the taxi waiting outside. He knows his phone number is on a slip of paper in Nate’s wallet. He knows Nate has his home address. That’s all he needs to know.

~*~

It only takes Nate a week to call. Mike picks up on the fifth ring, because he’d been out in the yard and had forgotten what his phone sounded like when it rang. He’s breathing heavy when he answers, wiping his wrist over his sweating forehead. Texas isn’t as hot as Iraq was, but it’s no picnic at this time of year, either.

“H’lo?”

There’s a pause. “Hi,” says Nate. “Mike?”

Mike grins. He catches his own shirtless reflection in the kitchen window, warped by the old glass. He’s not burnt yet, but he’s pink and goofy looking, a strange amalgam of flesh colours and angles. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, Nate. How’s it going?”

“Uh, good.” Nate takes an audible breath, sounding cheerier. “Yeah, it’s going well. How are you?”

Mike turns around to lean his ass on the counter. The fan overhead is churning up the heavy air in the kitchen, cooling his sweaty back. “Trying to get my fuckin’ lawn mower working, that’s all.”

“Do you need to mow your lawn in the summer there? I thought everything just withered and died.”

Mike chuckles. Trust Nate to call him out on bullshit immediately. “Yeah, it does. But I got nothing better to do, not gonna sit here on my thumb.”

Nate laughs too. “Right. Of course.” There’s a pause. “So, um.”

Mike smiles at the floor, the chipped and faded yellow lino scuffed by decades of chairs dragging across it. “So, you coming to see me, or what?”

Nate makes a little sound. “Well, that’s why I’m calling.”

Something clenches in Mike’s stomach. A plummeting kernel of apprehension. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Another pause.

Mike blinks sweat from his eyes. His skin is hot, but his guts are suddenly cold. He hasn’t been let down easy since college. He’s not sure how he’s going to take it. He inhales, already reaching for something gentle to say, a simple exit to offer. He knows Nate’s honorable little heart; he won’t avoid saying anything that needs to be said, but it’ll take it out of him nonetheless.

“I already bought a ticket,” Nate says, sounding embarrassed.

Mike pulls up short, his mouth open.

“But then I realized I hadn’t told you I was coming, and…” He hesitates. “I just wanted to make sure it’s still alright. If I come.”

Mike’s so relieved, he’s struck dumb for an instant. He flounders too long.

“Mike?” Nate says, sounding unsure again.

“Yeah, yeah.” Mike shakes himself. He starts grinning. “Hell yeah. Of course. What day are you getting in? I’ll come pick you up.”

~*~

“Jesus,” says Nate, peering out the back door. “Everything really is dead.”

Mike, wrangling his pile of disassembled machinery out of the way so they can get to the staircase, peers over Nate’s shoulder. The yard looks scorched, ankle deep with brown grass and desiccated weeds. The sticky wind picks up a puff of dust and gusts it toward the house. “If I fired up the mower out there, it’d probably light on fire,” he admits. He tugs the strap of Nate’s seabag where it’s slung over his shoulder. “Here, let me take that.”

Nate looks away from the yard. He’s paler than Mike remembers, his hair two weeks longer than when they last saw each other. He’s also visibly more relaxed, spine loose, his gait slower. There’s a new layer of surety behind his always-sure gaze. His mouth crooks. “I got it.” He gestures toward the stairs. “Lay on.”

Mike rolls his eyes, but does as he’s told. Nate follows him up the creaky wooden steps, onto the landing where the lightbulb blew out at some point while Mike was deployed. He hasn’t replaced it yet, but the little window at the far end of the hall lets in enough light to illuminate three doors. He taps the nearest one. “Bathroom.” He moves forward, then stops. He looks back at Nate. “Listen, there’s no pressure. I’ve got a spare.” He knocks his knuckle into the second door. “But if you want, mine’s the next one, and…”

Nate shoulders past him. “Yours is fine.”

Mike smiles after him, pleased and helpless.

~*~

He means to take it slow. He means to make Nate some lunch and show him around, maybe take him down to the grocery store to get whatever snacks he likes, put on the tv for a bit, goof off on the dehydrated lawn, have a couple beers. But Nate slings his bag into the corner of Mike’s bedroom, looks around with an expression on his face like he’s mentally filing away intel on a new AO, then turns to Mike with a strange lift to his chin. It’s simultaneously familiar and not - a challenge, but one he presents like he wants to lose.

“You want to give me a tour of the bed?” he asks.

Mike laughs. He can’t help it. It’s such a line - such a bad line delivered with such tremendous courage. Nate doesn’t take his laughter the wrong way. He laughs too, lashes dipping. “Sorry,” he says. “That’s terrible.”

Mike’s already moving toward him. He takes Nate’s hips in his hands and leans into him, backing him up. Nate sways, reaching to grip Mike’s shoulder. His eyes flick to Mike’s, mouth dropping open.

“I missed you,” Mike says, before Nate can speak. “I’m glad you came.”

He’s already lowering his head to kiss Nate’s mouth when he sees the words on their way. He takes Nate’s bottom lip between his teeth to stop them, but it’s too late.

“I haven’t come yet,” Nate mumbles against his lips.

Mike groans, and shoves him toward the bed.

~*~

Nate’s ferocious, in his own way. He squirms under Mike, pushing at him, demanding. It’s new, not what he’d been like in Iraq or Spain, but Mike loves it all the same. He can see the trajectory of it, where it’s coming from and where Nate wants it to go. He obliges happily, getting Nate’s wrists in his hands and pinning them, bracketing Nate between his thighs and grinding down on him, tasting the gasp Nate gives in response. Nate scratches him, when Mike lets him go, but only until Mike flips him over. He pulls Nate’s pants down over his ass, dragging him up by the waistband until he’s right where Mike wants him. Nate mumbles a cuss into the bed, leaning up on his elbows. Mike reaches to push him flat again, face into the pillows.

“Stay down,” he warns.

Nate scowls over his shoulder, but obeys. Provisionally, the coil of his muscles say. He could twist around and grapple Mike, if he wanted to. They’re probably about evenly matched. Mike watches him for a second to see if he’ll try. His blood pounds at the possibility, but Nate relaxes into the mattress. He peeks at Mike over his arm with one eye, the pupil dilated. Mike rubs the heel of his hand into the base of Nate’s spine. He’s so pale back here, soft all over. Mike’s still got all his clothes on, and he’s too hot, so he strips off his t-shirt and throws it on the floor. He pushes Nate’s thighs apart and gets between them. Nate’s ribs start rising and falling faster with his heavy breathing. He trembles when Mike squeezes the round of his bare ass, twitching backward into the touch.

“Goddamnit,” he says, when Mike rubs two days of stubble on the back of his thigh. And, “Oh, come on, _ shit,_” when Mike kisses the crack of his ass.

Mike smiles, letting Nate feel his teeth. “You just tell me when you want me to stop,” he says, and licks in.

It takes even less time than Mike expected. Nate moves against him restlessly, hungrily, pushing back on his tongue. In a couple minutes, he’s up on his knees, head down, groaning, chewing Mike’s sheets. Mike has to wrangle him like a bratty little bronco, holding him still with an arm across the small of his back, until Nate finally pants, “Please, please, I’m -” and Mike rolls him over to put his mouth on Nate’s hard cock instead, sheathing it all the way down.

Nate bucks up, making all kinds of noise. His hands curl in the air. Mike reaches blindly to take one and bring it to his head, so Nate can hold him where he wants him. Nate sobs out a starved, broken sound when he comes, hips flexing, his throbbing dick bruising the back of Mike’s throat. He subsides into a shivering wreck after, arms and legs twitching against the bed like he’s trying to make a coordinated attempt at something, but the signals aren’t quite getting through. Mike only takes enough time to kick his jeans off before leaning overtop him and kissing him again. Nate responds hungrily, his mouth slack but eager, one of his hands finding Mike’s side to pull him closer. His body is slick with sweat, skin prickled by goosebumps. Mike takes his own dick in hand, intending to jerk off on Nate’s flat, quivering belly, but Nate’s sloppy movements suddenly take on enough semblance of order to squirm down the bed until Mike’s knees are snugged beneath his armpits. He looks up, flushed, wild eyed, and says, “Fuck my mouth.”

“Well, okay, if you insist,” Mike says, and does.

After, when Nate is breathing properly again, sacked out on Mike’s side of the bed with one leg dangling off the mattress, Mike reaches to trace his finger over the line of dark ink snaking along the back of Nate’s shoulder. He’d noticed it earlier, but there had been more pressing matters at hand.

“When’d you get this?”

Nate smiles, half his mouth hidden by the crumpled sheets. “On my way back home.”

Mike raises an eyebrow. “Before you saw your parents?”

Nate nods.

The skin is pink around it, still flaking, but the linework is sharp and precise, a looping yet forthright script that cuts over the soft angle of Nate’s shoulderblade. It says,_ After our war, how will love speak? _

Mike looks at it for a long time. “What’s it mean to you?” he finally asks, when he’s decided what it means to him.

Nate is quiet for a few seconds, his back rising and falling slowly under Mike’s hand. At last, he says, “I think it means that people change, but they’ll always find a way to love each other. That love is human nature, even when it looks impossible. Even when things seem too fucked up for anything good to ever happen again.”

Mike smooths his thumb across the words, thinking about that. He pushes onto his elbow to lean down and kiss the curve of Nate’s shoulder. “I’m glad you came,” he murmurs, then cuts Nate off before he can make any more shitty jokes. “In both ways.”

Nate gazes up at him, eyes bright. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

~*~

It’s ridiculous, but Mike digs his guitar out of the spare room closet the next day. He hasn’t played it in years, and it sounds like dogshit. Nate makes dramatic wincing faces until he gets it tuned properly, and then a few more when he discovers that Mike’s repertoire consists almost exclusively of 70’s country. But he gamely follows Mike out onto the back deck as the sun starts to set, into the shade of the roof where it’s hot but not oppressive. He brings a couple sweating bottles of beer and takes the cap off Mike’s for him.

Mike says thank you with his eyebrows, plucking at the strings to find the chorus of _ Mama Tried. _ Nate sits down on the porch by his legs. A minute later, his hand curls around the back of Mike’s bare ankle, beneath the frayed cuff of his jeans. Mike watches him lean there, outlined with sunset gold, slouching in one of Mike’s old plaid shirts, his bottom lip just touching the rim of the beer bottle. It makes something Mike doesn’t have words for come alive in his chest. And because he doesn’t have words for it, he just strums his fingers across the strings, softly meandering, and hums until the sun goes down.

**Author's Note:**

> The title, and Nate's pretentious tattoo, are from John Balaban's poem [_After Our War_](http://www.blackcatpoems.com/b/after_our_war.html), which actually isn't nearly as romantic as it sounds.


End file.
